Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Spring

Chapter Seven: Spring

This is the penultimate chapter of the first half of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  As Spring emerges, life makes itself visible again.  The word that captured me on this reading was heaves.  Life heaves from the ground, water lifts through the trees.  I wonder if we could be still and diligent at the same time.  Could we listen to bird-song with a sense of wonder?  In the Fall in Houston we could see thousands of birds competing for a place on the wires and telephone poles.  I would never stop to listen.  I might watch and wonder from inside the car, but I have better sense than to stand under the swirl of thousands of birds!

As with other chapters, Dillard wants us to pay attention to the extravagant life that surrounds us.  This Fall I read Justinian’s Flea by William Rosen.  He is talking about bubonic plague.  He reminds us that most of the biomass on earth is bacteria.  We don’t look.  And if we don’t look, then perhaps we do not have to consider or contemplate that life.  How are we similar to rotifers, plankton and paramecia, or bacteria?

 

The more we see, the more we consider the wonder and the awe.  There is life!  When we are willing to see it, I think it shapes our meta-narratives, the stories that define our lives, our context, our reality.  We live in a Design that grows and breathes.  We live in a world where energy comes from the sun, and miracles, weird and wonderful, happen.  Would we look Life in the eye?

 

Quotes:     

There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.  There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly.

It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing.  If the mockingbird were chirping to give us the long-sought formulae for a unified field theory, the point would be only slightly less irrelevant.  The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful? (107)

Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does heave a ton of water every day.  A big elm in a single season might make as many as six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch; I couldn’t make one. (113)

I suspect that the real moral thinkers end up, wherever they may start, in botany.  We know nothing for certain, but we seem to see that the world turns upon growing, grows toward growing, and growing green and clean. (114)

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.  On a sunny day, the sun’s energy on a square acre of land or pond can equal 4500 horsepower.  These “horses” heave in every direction, like slaves building pyramids, and fashion, from the bottom up, a new and sturdy world.(119)

I don’t really look forward to these microscopic forays...I do it as a moral exercise; the microscope at my forehead is a kind of phylactery, a constant reminder of the facts of creation that I would just as soon forget. (122)

If I did not know about the rotifers and paramecia, and all the bloom of plankton clogging the dying pond, fine; but since I’ve seen it I must somehow deal with it, take it into account. (123)

Exodus as Intentional Family Curriculum

These are notes from a Sunday Morning class I taught on October 26 at North Street.

I want us to spend some time in Exodus.  This is the foundation for a series of lessons I plan to preach in March and April of next year.  This is gleaned from a lecture by Walter Brueggemann.

Grandparents help grandchildren remember.  Exodus is an antidote to amnesia. Exodus is about tracing out connections.  Exodus is about tracing our moral codes, providing expectations for life, painting the picture of a river of belonging.

What if we read this as a key to the whole?

Exodus 10:1-2 (NRSV) ¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his officials, in order that I may show these signs of mine among them, ² and that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I have made fools of the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them—so that you may know that I am the Lord."

 

Exodus is intentional family curriculum.  It depicts the competition between Pharaoh and Yahweh. Youth (perhaps in every age) have no feeling of debt to the past. All of our grandparent’s stuff becomes antique and obsolete. 

Was it about amnesia?  The empire has a vested interest in local amnesia.  It makes for a group of people easy to control (or easier anyway).  Look to the theme of Deuteronomy 8, Don’t forget.

This was always in play.  The forces of forgetfulness would say, Join Alexander, Join Rome, forget particularity, jettison memory.

 Exodus

 1. Remember the midwives.  They are named Shiphrah and Puah. Pharaoh is not named.  The midwives are significant.  They refused imperial fear and coercion.  The future comes down to mothers.  They have seething courage.  They are the ones to hold up the pictures of the Disappeared (of Argentina).  These are the mothers who take a casserole to the grieving. These are the mothers who made fools of the commandos of Pharaoh.  They are HISTORY MAKERS. 

2. Remember the terrorist activity of Pharaoh (and Moses).  Someone had to act.  The action did not come by innocence.  It was in Moses’ mis-adventure (murder of the Egyptian) that he challenged the status quo.  The truth is that oppression, forced labor, and exploitation requires confrontation. How?  We wrestle with that!
3. Remember the theophony. The bush burns.  The Voice of Holiness calls.  It is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  We can expect an interruption from God.  He answers the cry of his people.  Exodus 3:10 (NRSV) ¹⁰ So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt." 

1. Who? Me?  Yahweh says, “I will go with you.”
2. What is your name?  YHWH.  Tell them.
3. I have no power!  What if they will not listen?  What is that in your hand?  Put your hand in your cloak.  It will be a contest of power against power. (I am thinking he will need that with Zipporah, too!)
4. And there will be a renovation of the economy.  The Nile will turn to blood.  The cattle and the land and the laws of inheritance will all be demolished.
5. I can’t speak well.  I will speak through you.
6. Send someone else.  No! 

4. Remember the Bricks. 

1. Produce bricks, and when it seems you have too much time, time for worship on your hands, then you could work harder.  Meet the quota.
2. It is oppressive.  It is coercive economic theory.  That is true in academics, sports, sales, and church.
3. There is no oasis unless you depart!!
4. We have a tendency to absolutize the present power arrangements. If our grandparents knew that this was not always the way things were they could give us hope in the face of acquisitive power. 

5. Remember the death of the Firstborn and the Passover.

• The death of the first born raises a loud cry!  Every arrogant power is humiliated.  Pharaoh says, "Rise up, go away from my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord, as you said. ³² Take your flocks and your herds, as you said, and be gone. And bring a blessing on me too!" Exodus 12:31-32 (NRSV).
• Truth and pain are brought against power by YHWH (not by rebellion, not by force of arms, but by ‘the death of a first born – Jesus).

When the people LEFT what they knew, they were afraid.  I understand that.  It is the place where you lose control.  They grumbled.  Moses told them, ‘You have only to be still.’

On the other side of the water we hear a moment of song. 

In chapter 15 Miriam sings.  The Lord will reign forever.  There is a regime change.  There is a new order.

There is no short cut for this story.  You cannot begin to live this out where you wish.  You have to live it out.

Michael Walzer, ( Exodus and Revolution, 149)

• first, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt;
  
• second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land;
  
• and third, that “the way to the land is through the wilderness.”  There is no other way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.
  

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - The Present

We spend so much of our lives getting ready to live.  Years ago I heard a mantra from Randy Harris that I think is terrific.  It has four parts.  I will be incompetent.  That is not a goal, but a confession before the fact.  The standards I am pursuing are idealistic and important.  I will not abandon the ideal.  I will be incompetent.  I will be fully present.  I will see Christ in the face of every person I encounter.  I will be Christ in every situation I encounter. 

 

When Annie Dillard speaks of The Present, she is living in the now.  I wonder how long we can pay attention to one thing.  How long does an experience last?  I wonder if we could pay more attention.  Consciousness is an interesting concept.  When the lights flicker on behind the eyes, when the neural network opens for reactive input, do we have any control?  Consciousness is vital, but self-consciousness is (or can be) a hindrance to being fully present.

 

Have you had those moments that you wish would at least pause?  We want to soak in it, or soak it in.  It is too much to think it could last forever, but it could slow, couldn’t it?  I am sure that is why we love photographs, or paintings.  We will even call it ‘a capture.’  But that is not really true.  The ‘capture’ is in our memory, and the ‘capture’ is nothing more than an aide for remembering.

 

Dillard writes:

 

• This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present, this empty gas station, here, this western wind, this tang of coffee on the tongue, and I am patting the puppy, I am watching the mountain.  And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy.  (80)
• Experiencing the present purely is being emptied and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall. (82)
• There are a few live seasons.  Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present. (83)
• Michael Goldman wrote in a poem, ‘When the Muse comes She doesn’t tell you to write; / She says get up for a minute, I’ve something to show you, stand here.’ (85)
• I want to come at the subject of the present by showing how consciousness dashes and ambles around the labyrinthine tracks of the mind, returning again and again, however briefly, to the senses. (88)
• Dorothy Dunnett: There is no reply, in clear terrain, to an archer in cover. Invisibility is the all-time great cover; and the one infinite power deals so extravagantly and unfathomably in death ... makes that power an archer, there is no getting around it. (91)
• The least brave act, chance taken and passage won, makes you feel loud as a child. (91)
• Arthur Koestler wrote, “In his review of the literature on the psychological present, Woodrow found that its maximum span is estimated to lie between 2.3 and 12 seconds.” (93-4)
• In the top inch of forest soil, biologists found ‘an average of 1,356 living creatures present in each square foot, including 865 mites, 265 spring tails, 22 millipedes, 19 adult beetles and various members of 12 other forms ... Had an estimate also been made of the microscopic population, it might have ranged up to two billion bacteria and many millions of fungi, protozoa and algae – in a mere teaspoon of soil.’ (95)
• The world is a wild wrestle under the grass; earth shall be moved. (98)
• Like water flow: Ease is the way of perfection, letting fall. (102)
• You don’t run down the present, pursue it with baited hooks and nets.  You wait for it, empty-handed, and you are filled.  You’ll have fish left over. (104)